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Old 08-20-2015, 09:50 PM   #11 (permalink)
Exo
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I just wanted to say I've enjoyed reading all these and that you should post more. Much appreciated bud.
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Old 08-21-2015, 09:43 AM   #12 (permalink)
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Han Shan spits out these words,
words no one believes . . .
Honey’s sweet, so people love it,
But the best herbs are bitter, hard to get down.
Go along, and they’ll all love you.
Oppose them, and you’ll get a big-eyed stare.
All I see is wooden puppets,
playing out their melodrama.


- Han Shan



Most of us are born with this disease . . .
a taste that never wavers:
piglets, steamed, with garlic sauce,
roast duck with a dash of pepper,
or minced raw fish,
or maybe pig’s cheeks fried skin-on.
Don’t care how bitter someone else’s life might be,
as long as yours is sweet and greasy


- Han Shan



Here’s a message for the faithful
what is it that you cherish
to find the Way to see your nature
your nature is naturally so
what Heaven bestows is perfect
looking for proof leads you astray
leaving the trunk to search among the twigs
all you get is stupid


- Han Shan



My mind's the autumn moon
shining in the blue-green pool,
reflecting, glistening, clear and pure...
There's nothing to compare it to,
what more can I say?


- Han Shan




I was born just thirty years ago,
but I’ve wandered a million miles already.
Along the River through the green grass on the
banks,
out to the borderlands, where the red dust roils.
Chewed herbs, cooked up alchemical elixirs,
trying to become an Immortal.
Read all the Writings, chanted the Histories
aloud,
trying to learn them all by heart . . .
Today I’m on my way
home to Cold Mountain.
There, I’ll bed down in the creek, just to wash out
my ears.


- Han Shan



People ask about the Cold Mountain way:
plain roads don’t get through to Cold Mountain.
Middle of the summer, and the ice still hasn’t
melted.
Sunrise, and the mist would blind a hidden dragon.
So, how could a man like me get here?
My heart is not the same as yours, dear sir . . .
If your heart were like mine,
you’d be here already.


- Han Shan



Parrots live in the Western Lands;
forest huntsmen net them, bring them here.
Courtesans love to play with them, and so
they are well known at Court, in and out all day.
They’re given golden cages to dwell in,
but bolted in, their robes of plumes are ruined.
Better a swan, or a crane . . .
riding the winds high up, well known
to the clouds where they fly.


- Han Shan



There is a man who makes a meal of rosy clouds:
where he dwells the crowds don’t ramble.
Any season is just fine with him,
the summer just like the fall.
In a dark ravine a tiny rill drips, keeping time,
and up in the pines the wind’s always sighing.
Sit there in meditation, half a day,
a hundred autumns’ grief will drop away.


- Han Shan



Oh Wise Gentlemen, ignore me!
Like I ignore you fools.
I’m not stupid, I’m not wise,
from now on I’m just gone.
Into the night, singing in moonlight,
into the dawn, dancing with white clouds.
That’s the way to occupy your hands and mouth!
I can’t just sit still while my hair grows!


- Han Shan




My old landlady
got rich a couple years ago.
Used to be poorer than me.
Now she laughs that I don’t have money.
She laughs that I’ve fallen behind.
I laugh that she’s gotten ahead.
Both of us laughing, no stopping us.
Lady of the Land, and the Lord of the West.


- Han Shan



Every single thing has uses;
when you use it, use it right.
Use it the way it’s not intended,
first it wanes and then it drains!
A round hole for a square handle
is pretty sad, just an empty failure.
The most glorious warhorse ever sat
can’t match a crippled kitty
in a race to catch a rat.


- Han Shan



Happy? That was old Huntun . . .
Never got hungry, never even took a piss,
until he ran into those grateful friends (those fools)
who drilled the seven holes in him.
Up in the morning, work all day
just to get our food and clothes:
harvesting enough to pay our rent and taxes.
A thousand hands after just one coin . . .
All together shout it out now: Run for your life!


- Han Shan



Green water in the stream in the pass,
white water risen from the clear-welling spring . . .
Han Shan’s moon’s a flower, white as well . . .
So the darkest secret, the spirit by itself illumines:
gaze into the emptiness: to the ends of the earth . . .
You’re alone, with all within.


- Han Shan



A scroll full of poems by poets of talent,
and big pot full of wine fit for saints.
I love to walk out to watch the young bull calves;
sitting, I’d rather stay close to home.
Frost and dew can soak through thatch,
but the moon flowers white
through the window made of old bottles;
I’m poor, but I can build more windows now,
a couple more cups, to go
with the chanting of two or three new poems.


- Han Shan



Talking about my generation:
So many busy men,
broad in their educations, broad their views,
but they don’t know a thing about their very own
natures,
and they wander way off the Way.
If they really saw what’s real,
why would they offer us stale empty dreams?
In the single mantra, now, the heart,
you learn to know your own,
seeing what the Buddha sees.


- Han Shan



These days you might meet a man,
heart missing, dumb as a plank . . .
When he talks, nothing you can understand
comes out
of his mouth, except when he says, “I don’t care.”
Ask him the Way, “There ain’t no way”;
ask about the Buddha, he just says don’t ask.
Question him carefully, get into detail;
deep, vast, and empty is this slough of despond . . .


- Han Shan



When the stupidest folks read my poems,
they snort in incomprehension . . .
When the middling sort read my poems,
they think them over and pronounce them deep . . .
When a sage reads a poem of mine,
his face breaks into a great big smile.
When the great Yang Hsiu saw the
young woman, in an instant,
he understood the mystery!


- Han Shan



There are some folks who’re strict and straight,
but I’m not in the strict and straight cart.
Plain clothes making dancing easy,
and when the wine is gone you can
be drunk of singing!
Go for a full belly,
but don’t wear your legs out looking for lunch . . .
When the weeds grow out of your eye sockets,
you’ll rue that day . . .


- Han Shan



If pleasure comes, enjoy it.
Time’s never an arrow to let miss the mark . . .
We talk like we’ll live to a hundred,
but who’ll ever even get close?
Living in this world: just grasp a handful . . .
And money? That’s a word the autumn crickets
choke on.


- Han Shan



There’s a single tree here, twice as old
as the grove that grows, to reckon true.
It’s roots have answered every insult
that the mounds and channels
of the changing earth could give,
and its leaves have given way to wind and frost.
People laugh at the gnarled remains,
never thinking of the complex beauty of the grain
within.
Let the skin and flesh fall free . . .
What’s true, what’s real, is there, inside.


- Han Shan



There’s a naked worm up on Cold Mountain,
body white, head black,
with two books in its hands.
One’s The Way, and the other is The Power.
He has no ax, no fires at home,
no knapsack for the road.
But he always holds the Sword of Wisdom,
to cut down every thief of peace.


- Han Shan



Since I came to Cold Mountain,
I’ve fed my destiny on mountain fruits.
What cares could there be in an ordinary life?
I’ll simply follow mine through . . .
Sun and moon move like a river,
light and dark; just sparks from stone.
I give you charge of all that changes, earth and sky.
I am become the pivot,
here sitting on this cliff.


- Han Shan



They laugh at me, “Hey farm boy!
Skinny head, your hat’s not tall enough,
and your belt goes around you twice!”
It’s not that I don’t know what’s in . . .
If you don’t have the cash, forget it.
But someday I’ll get rich for sure,
and then I’ll wear a big, tall
Buddhist gravestone on my head.


- Han Shan



Old, sick, last years, hundred and some so far.
Brown, my face, and white my hair,
I love living on the mountain.
Cloth robe wrapped round me,
I accept what’s coming to me . . .
How could I try to imitate
this world’s vain schemers?


- Han Shan



How can reading a book keep you from dying?
How can reading a book keep you from being poor?
So why all this love of learning? To read,
as if loving to read made you better than others?
Just this: real humans, if they don’t love learning,
where shall they find peace for this body?
Bitter herbs are the best medicine,
but they are hard to swallow . . .
Try some garlic sauce. That’ll help you get it down.


- Han Shan



When people meet Han Shan,
they all say he’s crazy,
face not worth a second look,
body wrapped in rags . . .
They haven’t got a clue when I start talking;
I wouldn’t say what they say.
But I leave this message for those who
come looking for me:
“You could try to make it to Cold Mountain.”


- Han Shan



To wander free among the mountains,
you don’t have to buy them.
For a steep climb you need a stout staff,
and a good strong vine helps when it’s steeper.
The pines beside the creeks are always green,
but the rocks in their beds come in all colors.
You might get cut off from all your friends,
but in the spring the birds will sing for you.


- Han Shan



I enjoy it, like music, the simple path of my
everyday life,
vines in the mist, cave in stone, beside the stream.
I love the wild places, broad sunny ways to wander,
free as the white clouds, my companions.
There is a road, but it doesn’t go to town.
Heartless, you may find it.
On a stone bed, alone, night sitting,
full moon rising on Cold Mountain.


- Han Shan



Among a thousand clouds, ten thousand streams,
there is one idle man.
In the white sunlight
he rambles the green mountainside,
goes home at night to sleep below the cliff.
Watching the springs and the autumns pass
sequestered, for sure, but pure,
and owing aught to anyone.
Happy? Depending on no one.
Quiet as the autumn river, flowing.


- Han Shan



I live in a village in the countryside,
without a father or a mother.
With no name, no rank in my clan.
Some people will call me any old name.
Some people call me another.
No one is my teacher:
I’m just a poor low creature like many another.
But I know myself. I’m real,
and my heart is the Diamond.


- Han Shan



I live on the mountain
no one knows.
Among white clouds
eternal perfect silence.


- Han Shan

Last edited by Mr. Charlie; 08-21-2015 at 09:51 AM.
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Old 08-21-2015, 10:10 AM   #13 (permalink)
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My poems are poems,
even if some people call them sermons.
Well, poems and sermons do share one thing;
when you read them you got to be careful.
Keep at it. Get into detail.
Don’t just claim they’re easy.
If you were to live your life like that,
a lot of funny things might happen.


- Shih Te



Greed, anger, ignorance: drink deep
these poisoned wines and lie
drunk and in darkness, unknowing . . .
Make riches your dream: your dream’s
a cage of gold. Bitterness is cause of bitterness;
give it up, or dwell within that dream.
You better wake up soon, wake up
and go home.


- Shih Te



Wisdom’s wine’s cold water, pure.
Drink deep, it sobers you.
Where I live, at T’ien-t’ai mountain’s side
no silly fools will ever find me.
I roam in every shady valley,
but never where the world goes.
No worry, no grief,
no shame, and no glory.


- Shih Te



I see a lot of silly folks
who claim their own small spine’s
Sumeru, the sacred mountain
that supports the universe.
Piss ants, gnawing away at a noble tree,
with never a doubt about their strength.
They chew up a couple of Sutras,
and pass themselves off as Masters.
Let them hurry and repent.
From now on no more foolishness.


- Shih Te



See the moon’s bright blaze of light,
a guiding lamp, above the world!
Glittering, it hangs against the void,
a blazing jewel, its brightness through the mist.
Some people say it waxes, wanes;
theirs may, but mine remains
as steady as the Mani Pearl . . .
This light knows neither day or night.


- Shih Te



The Buddhas left their Sutras,
just because men are so hard to change.
It’s not just a matter of saintly or stupid,
each and every heart throws up a barricade,
each piles up his own mountain of karma.
How could they guess
that every single thing
they clutch so close is sorrow?
Unwilling to ponder, day and night,
as they embrace the falsehood that is flesh.


- Shih Te



Sermons? There must be a million.
Too many to read in a hurry . . .
But if you want a friend,
just come on out to T’ien-t’ai.
Sitting deep among the crags,
we’ll talk about True Principles
and chat about Dark Mysteries.
If you don’t come to my mountain,
your view will be blocked
by all of the others.


- Shih Te



Han Shan’s Han Shan.
Me, I’m Shih Te:
How could the ignorant know us?
Old Feng Kan, he thought he knew,
but when he looked, he couldn’t see,
and where he searched, he couldn’t find us.
You want to know how that could be?
In our way’s the power of nonbeing.


- Shih Te



Not going, not coming,
rooted, deep and still,
not reaching out, not reaching in,
just resting, at the center.
The single jewel, the flawless crystal drop,
in the blaze of its brilliance,
the way beyond.


- Shih Te



Cloudy mountains, fold on fold,
how many thousands of them?
Shady valley road runs deep,
all trace of man gone.
Green torrent’s pure clear flow,
no place more full of beauty:
and time, and time, birds sing,
my own heart’s harmony.


- Shih Te



Now your modern day monk’s
fond of preaching of love: hard-core fool.
He starts out in search of getting free
and ends up somebody’s lackey,
morning to evening one mean hut to the next
praying and chanting for cash . . .
He makes a bundle, then drinks it up
like any other shop-boy.


- Shih Te



And a few by Wang Fan-chih, who wrote in a similar style:


Rotting corpses don’t stop off to chat
once they start on their way away.
Quick! They get hauled to the fire.
Die young! There’ll be no more taxes to pay,
and no more sh*t to take from the boss man.


- Wang Fan-chih



A hungry bird will gorge itself to death,
like a man who’ll die to get his hands on property.
Money’s the thing that ruins humans.
The wise will keep it at a distance.


- Wang Fan-chih


A lot of guys want high office.
A job that pays enough to fill two bowls
of rice is good enough for me.
The fire that simmers the rice pot
will warm my toes too.


- Wang Fan-chih




I’m poor, so they laugh at me.
I’m so poor, their laughter delights me.


- Wang Fan-chih



So what in the world’s worth anything?
Poetry is priceless (or at least that’s what they
pay me).
Explaining, clearly, deeply, Love, and Duty,
what monkey-hearted men will never learn.


- Wang Fan-chih




I don’t want to be real, real rich,
don’t want to be real, real poor.
Let yesterday become today,
and today become tomorrow.
If you can learn to want no more,
you might become a real, real man.


- Wang Fan-chih



You don’t need a mirror to see your face.
You don’t have to be rich to give alms.
Just sitting will find you the face . . .
the face of the Buddha, thus come.


- Wang Fan-chih



Listen you, enjoy your time,
you really don’t have very long.
You were born just a moment ago,
in another moment you’ll be gone.


- Wang Fan-chih
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Old 08-21-2015, 12:22 PM   #14 (permalink)
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If you’re looking for a peaceful place,
Cold Mountain’s always a refuge.
A little breeze, breath of the shaded pines,
and if you listen close, the music’s even better.
Under the pines a graying man,
soft, soothingly, reading aloud from Lao Tzu.


- Han Shan



^ That poem leads us nicely to our next luminary - Lao Tzu, the enigmatic Taoist sage and author of the 81 poems of the Tao Te Ching (sometimes called the 'Dao De Ching', or simply the 'Lao Tzu').

There are hundreds of interpretations and translations of this classic, all different. Some call it a philosophical text, some say holy, sacred, mystical, spiritual, it doesn't matter. Either it speaks to you or it doesn't. To me it's a masterpiece, and my favourite book.

* Bear in mind: when the Chinese use the word 'Heaven' they are referring to the universe.




















Last edited by Mr. Charlie; 08-21-2015 at 01:08 PM.
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Old 08-23-2015, 11:02 AM   #15 (permalink)
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I got to admit, this thread started me on a "google adventure" once you started posting Han Shan and Shih-te. What a fun story those cheeky little Chinese bastards must have lived! I wonder how many gems were lost to the elements; only 300-ish were found it seemed. Apparently there is also some debate over the timeline as well, although they unarguably lived during the T'ang dynasty.

I'll return later to read more once I have the time.
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Old 08-27-2015, 03:48 PM   #16 (permalink)
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Yeah, the book (Cold Mountain Poems) I took the poems from mentions the speculation over their actual lives. But, ultimately, I feel the poetry itself tells us what we need to know, and far more than any historian or writer can.
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Old 08-30-2015, 11:38 AM   #17 (permalink)
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Continuing Lao Tzu's classic, Tao Te Ching:











Can't find the poems past 15, so that's all for now.
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Old 08-30-2015, 12:21 PM   #18 (permalink)
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I don't know anything about this next poet, Mary Oliver. But I really like her poetry:


Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.


- Mary Oliver




I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?


- Mary Oliver




I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be. It's impossible not
to remember wild and want it back.


- Mary Oliver



I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things of little importance,
in full self-attendance.
A condition I can't really call being alive.


- Mary Oliver



Can You Imagine?
For example, what the trees do
not only in lightening storms
or the watery dark of a summer's night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now - whenever
we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade - surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.


- Mary Oliver



What misery to be afraid of death.
What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.


- Mary Oliver



There are things you can’t reach. But
You can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god.

And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
As though with your arms open.


- Mary Oliver



You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


- Mary Oliver



I do not live happily or comfortably
With the cleverness of our times.
The talk is all about computers,
The news is all about bombs and blood.
This morning, in the fresh field,
I came upon a hidden nest.
It held four warm, speckled eggs.
I touched them.
Then went away softly,
Having felt something more wonderful
Than all the electricity of New York City.


- Mary Oliver



Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.


- Mary Oliver




to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go


- Mary Oliver



One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.


- Mary Oliver



When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

- Mary Oliver



Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.


- Mary Oliver



You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need anymore of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.


- Mary Oliver



Ten times a day something happens to me like this -
some strengthening throb of amazement -
some good sweet empathic ping and swell.
This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know:
that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.


- Mary Oliver



Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.


- Mary Oliver



I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.


- Mary Oliver



Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.


- Mary Oliver



I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.


- Mary Oliver



Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking
The rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
Under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
That we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.


- Mary Oliver



It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing
from one field to another, in summer, and the
mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either
knows enough already or knows enough to be
perfectly content not knowing. Song being born
of quest he knows this: he must turn silent
were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly
unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their -- if you don't
mind my saying so -- their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example -- I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field.


- Mary Oliver



Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.


- Mary Oliver



You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable
pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life
toward it.


- Mary Olive



Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving


- Mary Oliver



It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not
dazzled at least ten times a day.


- Mary Oliver

Last edited by Mr. Charlie; 08-30-2015 at 12:43 PM.
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Old 08-30-2015, 07:48 PM   #19 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Charlie View Post
I don't know anything about this next poet, Mary Oliver. But I really like her poetry: [...]
Mary Oliver's poetry feels very pure and meaningful as she shares her life's truths.

My favorite poem by her is "Morning Walk," which I put in katsy's poetry thread: http://www.musicbanter.com/song-writ...ml#post1452755

If you haven't read it yet, you might like to!
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Originally Posted by Neapolitan:
If a chicken was smart enough to be able to speak English and run in a geometric pattern, then I think it should be smart enough to dial 911 (999) before getting the axe, and scream to the operator, "Something must be done! Something must be done!"
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Old 08-30-2015, 07:50 PM   #20 (permalink)
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Thanks for the heads up. I'm there!
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